


quickly dream away the time; and then the moon

by CloudAtlas



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Feelings Realization, Housesitting AU, M/M, Oblivious Clint Barton, Pining, Rich Bucky Barnes, The Hamptons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26429056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: God, rich people are weird. A fact perfectly illustrated by the way Tony Stark (yes,thatTony Stark) had come up to him in the little coffee shop in Brooklyn where he used to work and said, “I heard you need a place to live, want to babysit my mansion in the Hamptons?”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 56
Kudos: 249





	quickly dream away the time; and then the moon

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic comes from the fact that a friend of mine got locked down in the mansion she was looking after on the south coast of England. It's kinda a shitty mansion (rich people are weird), but it is a mansion.
> 
> Title from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1 Scene 1. Beta'd by **squadrickchestopher**. <3

“Lucky?”

Clint pauses to see if he can hear the sound of paws on hardwood, but nothing comes.

“Lucky!” he calls again. “Here boy!”

God, people shouldn’t be allowed to have houses this big. It’s ridiculous, and impractical, and _stupid_. Who needs sixteen bedrooms? More importantly, who needs sixteen _bathrooms_? What are they gonna do, shit in a different one once a day for two weeks? God, rich people are weird. A fact perfectly illustrated by the way Tony Stark (yes, _that_ Tony Stark) had come up to him in the little coffee shop in Brooklyn where he used to work and said, “I heard you need a place to live, want to babysit my mansion in the Hamptons?”

What the actual fuck. Like, Clint said yes even though it meant he had to swap jobs, because he _really_ needed a new place to live and quickly, but _seriously_ : what the fuck. Real people don’t do that. What if he was a thief? He could steal all Stark’s shit and fence it for _millions_ , probably. There’s a cinema here. And a pool. And something that Clint’s fairly sure is an original Jackson Pollock, which is only something he knows because his friend Luis took him to a retrospective once.

“Lucky! Where are you, boy?”

Fuck. He’s going to have to _search the house_. It takes about seventeen years to get from one side to the other and he’d gonna have to do it because his fucking dog has vanished.

Clint would be less pissed if he wasn’t so tired. He’d had to open the shop this morning (Clint is no good at just sitting around and doing nothing, so he’d got another job in a coffee shop called Espresso Yourself after only three days of moving) and having to be at work for half past four in the morning is probably the worst thing about his new job. And there are _a lot_ of bad things about it. Customers, for one. Folk in the Hamptons are _magnitudes_ worse than folk in Brooklyn. No one _here_ would randomly ask a stranger if they wanted to live rent free in their _sixteen bedroom mansion_. To be fair though, that’s a stupid thing to do regardless of where you live and Tony Stark is a crazy person with no self-preservation instincts.

“You’re not getting any pizza if you keep this up!” Clint calls, hoping the word ‘pizza’ will bring Lucky running. No luck.

Fine, he’ll start in the attic and work his way down.

Lucky isn’t in the house. Clint checks all fifteen gazillion rooms and Lucky’s in none of them. He _does_ find a second library and a room just full of car parts, but no Lucky.

He checks the garage (big enough for at least ten cars, none of them Clint’s because _ha_ , like Clint can afford to keep a car). He checks the shed (which probably only got the name ‘shed’ because of its _comparative_ size to the rest of the place. It’s got two floors, a pool table, and another little cinema in it. It’s not a shed, it’s a frat house). He checks the gate house (There is! A fucking! Gatehouse! Sure, it’s more of a shed than the shed, but _the point stands_ ). Finally, he scours the garden – all seven of acres of it – and the pool house.

No Lucky.

Fuck.

If Clint were a dumb dog with an adventurous spirit, what would _he_ do?

He walks the perimeter.

The gap in the hedge is so small Clint almost misses it and, when he _does_ see it, he spends a good five minutes debating with himself whether Lucky is in fact small enough to squeeze through it. Then he pulls up Google Maps on his ancient smartphone and spends almost _half an hour_ trying to work out where this gap in the hedge is, which property is on the other side of it, and how to get there to ask if he can have his dumb dog back.

He calls Lucky’s name periodically, but the stupid dog doesn’t come running.

Eventually, Clint sighs. Guess he’s just going to have to bike the – he squints at his phone – four point seven miles to the front door of the house he can _see through the hedge_ and hope whoever lives there is (a) in and (b) not an asshole. He looks down at his clothes, worn and crumpled and smelling of coffee. Urgh, Clint doesn’t belong in the Hamptons.

At least the bike ride is nice. For all its many and sundry shortcomings, the Hamptons _is_ a beautiful part of the world. Shame about all the ugly houses though.

Thankfully, the place Clint’s heading to isn’t _that_ bad. It looks much smaller than Stark’s behemoth and it’s not one of those ugly modern mansions that look more like an avant-garde greenhouse than anywhere human beings should live. Even better, it doesn’t have one of those gate-and-intercom systems at the entrance, so Clint can cycle all the way up to the front door and (hopefully) have a face-to-face conversation with an actual human being.

He can never hear anything properly with those intercom systems. He has no idea why, but they mess with his hearing aids something terrible.

He knocks on the door.

“Hello?” He can’t hear barking or anything, but he supposes that doesn’t mean much. This place is smaller than Stark’s place, but it could still fit his childhood home into it probably more than twelve times over. Plus, Lucky’s probably still sniffing around the garden. “Anyone home?”

There’s a light on, he can see it through the frosted glass of the door. Is there a doorbell? Doorbells are definitely better when the house is this big. Knocking is a habit though; his doorbell was always busted back in Brooklyn.

There _is_ a doorbell. Clint rings it.

“Yes?”

The guy who answers the door looks… expensive, is the only word Clint can think of. He looks like he _belongs_ in a mansion in the Hamptons. And not in a tacky way, there’s no red silk robe or gold watch, he just looks… rich. And well put together. Maybe he’s a model?

“Um,” Clint says like an idiot. “Hi.”

The man raises an eyebrow and looks like he’s about to shut the door in Clint’s face.

“Sorry,” Clint rushes out. “I’m housesitting the place that backs onto your garden and I think my dog got through the hedge?”

Now the man looks surprised but he doesn’t say anything and, after a long silence of them just staring at each other, Clint asks, “Can I check?”

The man frowns. “No,” he says, “I’ll do it. What’s it look like?”

“He. Golden lab mix, one eye. Answers to Lucky.” Or _should_ , Clint thinks uncharitably. Stupid dog.

“Wait here.”

The door shuts and Clint grins to himself. He _knew_ Stark was an aberration. _Normal_ people don’t just let you into their home.

Five minutes later and the man is back, Lucky prancing about his feet.

“Lucky!” Clint exclaims, ducking down to let Lucky lick excitedly at his face. “You have a bazillion acres to run around now, what the hell are you doing bothering the neighbours?”

Lucky barks as if in answer and Clint laughs.

“Sorry about him,” Clint says to the man while still on his knees trying to calm the squirming dog. “I don’t think he’s had this much space ever. It’s made him a little crazy.”

“It’s okay,” the man replies.

He’s staring at Clint oddly, but Clint shrugs it off. All rich people are weird, he’s coming to realise. Maybe once you earn over 80k a year all those zeros mess with your head. It explains a lot of things. Kate’s dad, for one. And Stark.

“I’ll get it fixed,” Clint says into another long silence.

The man shrugs.

“Thanks,” Clint says eventually.

The door shuts.

“The zeros definitely makes people weird,” Clint says to Lucky, who barks again in response. Then; “Shit,” he suddenly says. “I forgot your leash.”

Clint doesn’t manage to get the gap in the hedge fixed, though it’s through no lack of trying. There’s no convenient wood around and he feels plugging the gap with old car parts is a terrible idea. He has no idea where the nearest lumber yard is, or the nearest garden centre, and it’s not like he has money to buy whatever is needed even if he did. He needs Tony Stark to pay for this, even if he ends up doing all the heavy lifting. So he calls Stark’s cell – because Tony Stark is _certifiably insane_ and only gave Clint his _personal cell_ as a contact number – but he never picks up and Clint feels like _multiple_ voicemails about the gap in the hedge is overkill. He contemplates emailing Stark Industries Customer Services. He contemplates _calling_ Stark Industries Customer Services. He contemplates calling his old work and asking them to corner Stark the next time he comes in for his caffeine fix.

He does none of these things. Instead, Lucky goes through the hedge eight times in the next two weeks, resulting in Clint learning all the shortcuts between Stark’s place and what he now calls Lucky’s Second Home.

“Hi,” says the man, clearly expecting Clint. “I think I’ve found out why Lucky’s always coming over.”

Clint still doesn’t actually know the man’s name – he calls him Lucky’s Other Dad in his head – but he gets the distinct feeling that he’s _lonely_. There’s something about his acceptance of the situation, and the strange look he gets whenever he sees Clint. And also the way that he always seems to be in whenever Clint comes over to pick Lucky up.

Not the Lucky is with him today, apparently. Or at least, he’s not prancing around the man’s feet like he usually is.

“Have you been feeding him?” Clint says.

He means it as a joke, but the man flushes and fidgets, like a kid caught stealing cookies.

“I only – ” he starts, just as Clint says, “That was a – ”

They both stop, staring at each other. The man looks away first.

“Why do you think Lucky’s always coming over, then?” Clint asks, deciding to save the man the apparent embarrassment he has over occasionally feeding Clint’s dog.

The man jerks his head, clearly indicating that Clint should follow him and, for the first time, Clint steps into Lucky’s Second Home.

“I found them today,” the man says.

“Them?” Clint asks, pausing, suddenly worried that Lucky’s found some expensive purebred bitch somewhere to knock up and Clint will now have to deal with both puppies _and_ pissed off rich people. (Also, fuck whoever made bitch a swear word. Clint always feel skeevy whenever he uses it properly now.)

The man doesn’t reply, just leads Clint deeper into his house, and Clint hurries to catch up. He now knows from experience how easy it is to get lost in one of these stupid houses and he doesn’t even want to _imagine_ how much Kate will laugh if he tells her he got lost in a _total stranger’s_ _mansion_ while picking up his runaway dog.

The man opens a door to what is clearly a utility room and Clint sees, curled up on what looks like some discarded carpet rolls, Lucky asleep with a snowy white cat.

“You... have a cat?” Clint asks slowly.

The man looks faintly amused. “I do now, apparently.”

“Oh.”

They stare at the sleeping animals for a little longer and then the man closes the door on Lucky and the cat, like they’re tuckered out kids whose naps are long overdue. For a moment Clint isn’t sure what to do. Is he not going to take Lucky home now? Is he going to have to go back to the huge, empty, sixteen bedroom Stark mansion on his _own_? God, it feels like a beginning of a horror film.

“I don’t know when it turned up,” the man says. “Apparently I attract stray animals?”

“Hey,” Clint says, snapped out of his worry over returning alone to that massive mansion, “Lucky’s not a _stray_.”

The man smiles at that, but it’s a strange smile; sort of fond and sort of self-deprecating and sort of sad. Clint doesn’t like it. Men as attractive and expensive looking as this guy shouldn’t look like that. It ruins the illusion that money is all you need to be happy. Not that Clint has ever believed that, but still.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” the man suddenly blurts out.

“What?”

“I was,” the man looks shifty now, “just about to make food.”

Clint stares at him. “Dude,” he says eventually, “I don’t even know your _name_.”

The man blinks. “Oh.” He sounds wrong footed. “I’m, I’m Ja— Bucky.”

“Ja Bucky? You related to Ja Rule?” He blinks again and Clint waves a hand in dismissal. No one ever finds his jokes funny. It’s eternally disappointing. “Never mind. I’m Clint.”

“Hi Clint,” _Ja Bucky_ says, giving him a dorky wave and immediately colouring. “Um. You allergic to anything?”

“No.” Clint can and does eat anything, including, on occasion, stuff from the floor. He’s the opposite of a picky eater and he’s not found anything he’s allergic to yet.

“Parmesan chicken okay?” Bucky continues, opening a massive fridge practically a twin of the one Clint’s currently using, apart from Bucky’s is full, while Clint’s is pitifully empty. Clint _can_ cook, it’s just… Stark’s mansion has a chef grade kitchen and honestly? It scares him.

“Sounds good. Can I help at all?”

“No, no. It’s fine.”

It’s not fine though, because Clint doesn’t know Bucky at all and watching other people cook _requires_ small talk. But before the silence forces Clint to say anything embarrassing, Bucky speaks.

“You said you were housesitting?” he asks, sounding weirdly nervous as he arranges ingredients on the counter in front of Clint. Clint has no idea why though, this entire enterprise was _his_ idea. “How’d you get into that?”

Clint barks out a laugh and Bucky shoots him a wide-eyed look that he can’t interpret.

“Okay, Bucky.” Clint grins up at him. “Buckle up for what my friend Kate calls ‘the most Clint Barton thing to ever happen’.”

Bucky looks a little dazed and Clint frowns.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” Bucky immediately replies, resuming his chopping of vegetables. “Yes, I’m fine. Continue.”

“Okay, so; I lived in this shitty building in the crappy part of Brooklyn. That’s pretty normal, right? Nothing weird about that. Well, guess what? Turns out the building was owned by the local mob.”

Over the next half hour, Clint relates the whole story. About the crappy lift and broken doorbell and the super who smoked like a chimney and never actually fixed anything. About teaching himself to fix his own boiler, his own electrics, his own sink and, as a result, accidentally becoming the de facto super of a building _apparently run by a mob_. About finding out that his building was run by a mob. About the rent hikes and intimidation. About how, one by one, all his neighbours found other places to live until only he was left. About how he turned up one day to find what little he owned strewn over the sidewalk, clearly thrown there only minutes before, Ivan the Super grinning at him around his ever-present cigarette and saying, “You evicted now, bro. For not paying rent.”

“I’m fairly sure that’s not legal,” Bucky says with a frown and – understatement of the _century_ , Bucko, Clint thinks _._

“Of course it’s not legal. But guess who doesn’t have enough money for a lawyer?” Clint points to himself with both thumbs. “This guy!” he singsongs.

Clint explains about gathering up his few possessions not broken by their six storey trip from his apartment window. Thank Christ he’d had the foresight to guess _something_ like this would happen and asking Kate a few weeks prior if she could keep some of his more valuable stuff at her place; his mom’s jazz records, his granddad’s antique hunting bow, his shitty ten year old laptop. He explains how he’d spent the night in the local park sleeping on garbage bags full of his own clothes, before lugging all his shit to the coffee shop where he worked the next morning.

He explains about stealing Ivan’s dog.

“You stole Lucky from the _mob_?” Bucky asks, aghast.

“ _A_ mob, not _the_ mob,” Clint dismisses. “These guys aren’t _the Mafia_. They’re just thugs who somehow ended up with a building.”

“That’s not _better_ , Clint.”

“Sure it is. Have you not seen _The Godfather_?”

Bucky glares at him. “What’s this got to do with mansion sitting?”

“I’m getting there.” Clint takes a sip of the (very nice) beer Bucky had given him and continues. “So I went into work and complained to literally everyone about how I was homeless and Ivan was a dick and he didn’t deserve a dog anyway and how Kate couldn’t put me up because she and her girlfriend were already putting up two of their friends while they tried to find a place for themselves while also working some shitty internship with… someone, I forget who.”

He takes another swig of beer.

“ _And then_ ,” Clint says dramatically, “Tony Stark leans over the counter, asks for the largest and strongest black coffee we can possibly make, and says I can live rent free in his Hamptons mansion in exchange for letting in the contractors working on his pool house. If I want.”

Bucky stares at him.

“What?”

“Crazy right?” Clint says with a laugh. “Who does that?”

“You’re mansion sitting for _Tony Stark_?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Jesus,” Bucky gives him an incredulous, wide-eyed stare. “I thought you were, like, my next door neighbour or something.”

“I mean, technically I am.”

“Well, _yeah_ , but that’s…” He trails off, seemingly at a loss.

“So yeah,” Clint continues, “that’s basically it. Seeing as it was probably a good idea for me to get out of Brooklyn for a while and Ivan’s shitty mob is unlikely to mess with _Tony Stark_ , I quit my job and moved into his ridiculous Disney castle. Like a kept boy.” Bucky blushes at that. “And then I got a job at a coffee shop out here because turns out, being unemployed is boring as _fuck_ and I suck at being a kept boy. Plus, I might as well do some saving while I don’t have to pay rent, right?”

There’s another long silence where Bucky just stares at him, bewildered and blush stained.

“How long are you here for then?” he finally asks.

“Um, Stark said three months minimum, but also kinda as long as I want? Apparently his wife is happier if someone’s in the place. He said this was one of the few properties he owns that she actually likes.” He laughs, incredulous. “‘ _One of the few properties’_. Rich people are _wild_. Did you know almost every bathroom in that place has a _hot tub_?”

Clint hadn’t even _seen_ a hot tub in real life until he came to Stark’s mansion.

“I have a hot tub,” Bucky says.

The grin falls off Clint’s face and he feels like he’s made some kind of terrible faux pas. “Oh.”

Another long silence. The timer on the cooker goes off.

“Parmesan chicken?” Bucky says.

Turns out, having dinner with a guy he barely knows is just as awkward as Clint thought it would be. But Clint also feels vindicated because it’s also painfully obvious that Bucky is lonely, rattling around this big house all by himself. Clint wonders how that came to be; as he obviously doesn’t particularly _enjoy_ being on his own it seems unlikely to have been a deliberate choice. On the other hand, despite clearly having the money to move, Bucky doesn’t seem to be planning to, and Clint can’t help but wonder why. If he’s so miserable here, why not leave?

He doesn’t ask though, not during that dinner and not in the following months, when it almost becomes habit to simply bike over to Bucky’s place if Lucky doesn’t come immediately when called. Because sure, dinner was awkward but it was also _nice_ , and Bucky clearly needs a friend. It’s not his business why Bucky’s here living the millionaire hermit lifestyle, though it’s slightly less hermit-like now, seeing as he kept the white cat. Alpine, he named her, and he spoils her rotten. Not that Clint can judge; Lucky definitely eats more pizza than any dog should.

Still, he does wonder.

“What do you _do_ , anyway?” Clint asks one Saturday afternoon, as he lays spread across a lawn chair in Bucky’s garden. He feels like he spends more time at Bucky’s place than at Stark’s but, in his defence, being alone in that enormous house is disconcerting. He loves the pool and the hot tubs and the cinemas, but the endless rooms full of dust-sheeted furniture are creepy. He lives out of four rooms: the kitchen, one of the lounges, a bedroom and the main conservatory. All the other rooms are closed off; he checks them once a week but that’s it. It’s a lot of dead space.

He prefers Bucky’s place – it’s smaller to start with, for a given definition of ‘smaller’, but also it has _one whole other human_ in it. And a cat.

“I’m one of the founding members of Wakanda,” Bucky says.

Clint looks up sharply to find Bucky already looking at him.

“ _Seriously_?”

“Not _founder_ founder but yeah. I was, like, the fifth hire or something? I went to MIT with Shuri.”

Wakanda is the biggest new tech start-up in the country. Even _Clint_ knows that. He even knows of Shuri King. TIME Magazine called her ‘The Billie Eilish of Silicon Valley,’ even though Wakanda is based in New York. Or is Billie Eilish ‘The Shuri King of Pop’? He can’t remember. The point is, she’s young and brilliant and scaring all the old white men of the industry. _Especially_ Elon Musk, which is a massive point in her favour, as far as Clint is concerned.

Her older brother, T’Challa, is cool too, and married to the actress Nakia Habithi who was _awesome_ in _Plain of the Ancestors_ and does a load of charity work in both Harlem and various African and Caribbean countries. And she’s been cast in the new season of _Dora Milaje_. And she always looks amazing at the Met Gala. And –

Okay, so maybe Clint has a bit of a crush of Nakia Habithi. But seriously, who doesn’t? Nakia Habithi is amazing.

“Wow. That’s insane.” How is it that Clint now knows a founder of Wakanda, _and_ Tony Stark? And how has it taken almost four months for Clint to learn this? Admittedly it’s probably because they spend their time arguing about _Dog Cops_ and sports teams and which is the best micro-brewery in Brooklyn. Priorities, Clint has them. “How come you’re always here then? Shouldn’t you be in Manhattan, being all brainy and amazing and shit?”

Bucky shrugs and gives him a small, fond smile. Bucky’s always giving him looks like that. It’s kinda weird, but mostly it’s just Bucky.

“I’m having a sabbatical,” he says, with an odd twist to his mouth.

“Oh,” Clint says, and then, “Um, what’s a sabbatical?”

Bucky gives him another strange look, though this one is definitely closer to ‘how do you not know this?’ rather than the more inscrutable looks he’s forever shooting Clint’s way.

“Like… leave, but they hold your job for you?”

Rich people really are wild, Clint thinks, but he doesn’t say it, not this time. He thinks Bucky might take it wrong. Instead he says, “I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

“It’s normally for study or volunteering or something. Can be up to a year.”

Fucking hell. A year off work and they keep your job for you. Clint’s lucky to get a _week_ without his job being given to someone else.

“So…” he asks, “are you studying?”

“No,” Bucky’s reply is short and final and Clint, whose instincts are hit and miss at the best of times, understands enough to let it drop.

“Hey,” he says instead. “Do you have a pool?”

Bucky gives him a baffled look, probably thrown by the change in subject, “No?”

“Stark has two, an indoor and an outdoor. He said I can use both.” Clint gets off the lawn chair. “C’mon, I wanna go swimming. Let me show you Stark’s.”

Clint’s not sure why, but he finds it weird that Bucky is just as overwhelmed by Stark’s place as Clint himself was the first time he walked in. Surely, what with both of them clearly being millionaires or whatever, Bucky would be used to this kind of thing? But apparently not, because Bucky’s eyes shoot wide at the mahogany banistered princess staircase in the atrium and stay saucer large all the way through the house.

Maybe, Clint suddenly thinks, it’s just because this is _Tony Stark’s house_. He is, after all, _Tony fucking Stark,_ who apparently decided it wasn’t tacky at all to hang a weird portrait of himself over the stairs. You’d think his wife would have something to say about it, but apparently not.

“Towels in there.” Clint points at the relevant cupboard in the newly refurbished pool house. It had taken him _ages_ to find them. He’d used his bathroom towel for the longest time. “There’s showers through there, and loads of pool toys through there.”

He gestures in the relevant directions and then unceremoniously strips off his t-shirt. Clint had very little shame to start off with and he’s lost even more of it now, living alone in this massive house. He swims almost every morning and normally just strips off by the side of the pool – he didn’t even have _trunks_ for the first few weeks – so the pool _house_ is a step up in his book, company be damned.

Bucky doesn’t seem to agree though, because he lets out a hilarious little squeak and turns bright red.

“Sorry,” Clint says, though he’s vaguely confused that Bucky should be so prudish. It’s just his _chest_. “Got used to being on my own, I guess.” He shuffles into one of the sheet-swathed bedrooms.

Out of all the ostentation and unnecessary excessiveness of Stark’s mansion, the pool house is the only one that _actively_ pisses him off, mainly because the pool house is about the same size as the family home he grew up in in Iowa. There’s two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a utility room, and a decent sized lounge area – but it’s a _pool house_ ; a building that gets used only intermittently during _one season_. It’s so _pointless_ and… insulting, really.

He has stocked the freezer with beer and ice cream though.

And the pool is _great_. Clint speeds through getting changed and removing his hearing aids before gleefully flinging himself into the water. Summers this hot are only allowed if you have an outdoor pool to dick around in, he’s decided. In fact, he should harass Kate and America into staying for a little while. It might be difficult, what with their jobs and all, but everyone needs a pool this great in a summer this hot.

“C’mon,” he calls, probably too loudly, as soon as he sees Bucky emerge from the pool house. He pushes his hair off his forehead and stands, water cascading down as he reaches for the ball that’s sitting on the edge of the pool. He throws it at Bucky, but it arcs wide. “Sometime today, Bucko.”

Bucky still looks a little flushed – probably the heat, Clint decides – but he executes a perfect dive into the pool, emerging just in front of Clint.

“Eight point five from the American judge,” Clint says.

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he smiles nevertheless.

They play water frizbee, a game Clint makes up on the spot and keeps changing the rules to just to keep Bucky from winning. They swim around with pool noodles while debating the various merits of their favourite cartoons from their childhood, Bucky having to repeat himself constantly until Clint caves and puts his hearing aids back in. Clint learns Bucky’s birthday is March 10th. Bucky learns Clint’s birthday was two weeks ago and he hilariously manages to hold a grudge about not being told for a good half hour. They debate the merits of ordering take out versus the fact that they’d have to walk across the entire garden, and through the entire ridiculous mansion, just to get to the front door to pick it up.

Lucky turns up just as they’re settling on raiding the freezer and eating all the probably out of date garlic bread they find, having probably made his way through the conveniently large cat flap Bucky installed for Alpine in the utility room they favour. He jumps in the pool. He steals Bucky’s garlic bread. He slobbers all over Clint in excitement, demanding belly rubs and games of fetch – _especially_ games of fetch that involve (a) jumping in the pool and (b) Bucky’s garlic bread – and, after about an hour of that, he shakes pool water all over them and falls asleep on top of their dry towels.

“You’re lucky I love you, mutt,” Clint says to his sleeping form.

The sun sets and Clint turns on the pool lights, which bathe Bucky’s face in eerie blue tones. They’ve both pruned spectacularly, but neither of them suggests leaving. Instead, they sit on the steps into the water and talk and talk and talk. Clint hasn’t made a friend in _years_ , not a proper one, not a _good_ one. He’s forgotten how _nice_ it is, learning about a new person. Bucky’s smart and funny and isn’t patronising when Clint asks him to explain something, or when Clint doesn’t get his references. In fact, as far as Clint can tell, the only downside to Bucky is that he keeps _looking_ at Clint and it’s beginning to make him self-conscious.

“Do I have something on my face?” Clint asks eventually.

“What?”

“You keep looking at me weird.”

Inexplicably, Bucky blushes. “Oh, sorry.” He shifts until the water comes up to his chin. “You’re fine.”

Clint squints at him, as if he can check Bucky’s sincerity through looking alone but, before he can come to any kind of conclusion, a yawn splits his face, making his jaw crack.

“Ah shit,” he says through another yawn. Christ, chlorine makes you tired. “What the fuck even is the time?”

He casts around for his phone before remembering he left it in the pool house with his clothes and giving up.

“Eleven thirty six,” Bucky supplies, and Clint looks at him in surprise before seeing – ah yes, Bucky is exactly the kind of person who has one of those Fitbit things.

“You wanna just stay here?” Clint asks. “Not like I don’t have the room.”

Bucky looks at him, gaze unreadable.

“No,” he says softly. “I should probably go.”

Clint shrugs, slightly stung but trying to hide it. “Suit yourself.” Water cascades off him as he stands and heads for the showers. He’s going to have to drink _so much water_ before his skin stops being dry and chlorine-y.

There’s little hotel bottles of shampoo and shower gel in these showers and when Clint’s clean, he towels off and redresses in his t-shirt and jeans from earlier in the day and goes to sit on one of the couches in the lounge, waiting for Bucky to be ready. He should at least walk him to the gate, which is chock full of extra security features Clint’s sure are unnecessary. It’s only polite. But when Bucky comes in, clean and dressed from his shower, instead of leaving he sits on the other couch and asks some random question about the pool house refurbishment and time spirals away from them again. By the time Clint actually notices that Bucky hasn’t, in fact, gone home, it’s nearly two in the morning and they’re both wrapped tight in the couch dust sheets.

“I’m getting a divorce,” Bucky says quietly. “That’s why I’m on sabbatical.”

Clint can hardly make him out in the darkness, only the slight glitter of his eyes reflecting the pool lights Clint forgot to turn off.

“Why?” Clint asks.

If he were more awake, he’d remember to qualify. He’d remember to say the rest of the sentence, the ‘did they give you a sabbatical for that?’ because he’s fairly sure that’s not normal. But he’s too tired, so it just hangs there, giving Bucky all the wrong ideas about what Clint’s asking.

“Because, as a bisexual, I’d _obviously_ be sleeping around so she thought she might as well too. Only fair, right?”

The words trickle into Clint’s brain slowly, syllable by syllable, until the meaning arranges itself. In the dark, Clint frowns.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever fucking heard,” he mumbles into the dust-sheet, because he doesn’t need any more information to know that Bucky _wouldn’t_ sleep around. The hurt at the implication is clear in his voice.

“Yeah well,” Bucky replies, and now there’s something _resigned_ to his tone of voice, something that says, _people, eh?_ Like he’s inured to people being _absolutely fucking bullshit._

“No, not _yeah well_ , Bucky,” Clint says, pulling himself up at least far enough that his voice isn’t muffled by fabric, so his indignation can be heard. “That’s _bullshit_. Being bi doesn’t mean you’re a player. Only dicks think that. She should have treated you with more fucking respect.”

Bucky doesn’t reply and, eventually, Clint drops off to sleep.

Clint’s jerked out of sleep and into the pre-dawn twilight by Bucky sneezing loud enough to wake the dead. Christ, he can only have been asleep for something like three hours, and now his ears feel all tacky and awful because he forgot to take his hearing aids out last night. He’s cold now, wrapped as he is only in a dust-sheet; the pool house has been unoccupied for too long and all yesterday’s heat has leached out of the stone. Plus, this couch was _not_ designed to be slept on by a six foot three guy and his back and legs are killing him.

Clint lets out a groan and turns onto his back, stretching his legs over the arm of the couch.

Bucky grunts in reply.

Urgh, and he’s still in his jeans. Fuck this.

Clint levers himself off the couch, so tired he feels almost drunk, and sways on his feet for a moment before crossing the room to Bucky’s couch and tearing the dust-sheet off him.

This time, Bucky squawks.

“The fuck?” he mumbles, glaring blearily at Clint.

“C’mon,” Clint replies and, when Bucky doesn’t move fast enough, he grabs Bucky’s hands and pulls him off the couch. “Bed.”

“W-what?” Bucky stutters as Clint pulls him by the hand out of the pool house and across the garden.

“ _Bed_ ,” Clint says, more forcefully this time. “I’m too tall for that couch and I’m cold.”

Bucky doesn’t reply to that, but Clint doesn’t let go of his hand. Stark’s place is massive and Clint picked one of the out-of-the-way bedrooms as his own. Five a.m. is not the time to be wandering around a massive fuck off mansion, lost.

His room is a mess when they finally arrive, but Clint is far too tired to care. Instead he just drops Bucky’s hand, strips out of his t-shirt and jeans, and climbs under the covers.

Bucky doesn’t follow.

“Fucking hell,” Clint mumbles eventually. “Close the curtains and get in. The bed’s big enough for an orgy and I don’t bite.”

He hears Bucky blow out a long breath and mumble something too quiet for Clint to make out, but he eventually moves to close the curtains.

Clint nods once against his pillow, satisfied, before unhooking his hearing aids. He’s asleep before Bucky even climbs in.

When Clint wakes next, it’s nearly midday and Bucky’s apparently stolen all the covers. Only Clint’s feet are tangled in sheets and, when he pulls his head from under his pillow, it’s to find a Bucky-burrito staring at him across what seems like miles of white cotton.

“Mornin’,” Clint manages, turning onto his back and stretching hard enough to make his ribs creak.

Bucky doesn’t reply, but his blue eyes look huge when surrounded by that much snowy cotton. He’s back to creepy staring, but Clint’s not yet really awake enough for it to bother him. Instead he yawns, idly scratches his stomach, and stretches again, before rubbing his hands roughly across his face and grimacing.

“God, my mouth tastes like ass,” he complains to no one in particular. “And I’m fucking starving. Breakfast?”

Bucky might say something in reply but without his hearing aids, Clint can’t hear him.

“Hold a sec,” he says, leaning across the expanse of cotton to reach the bedside table. Seriously, at least four people could sleep in this bed. Why is it so huge? It’s borderline annoying. He should have picked a different bedroom.

“Breakfast?” he asks again, once his ears are in. He turns back to Bucky to find him curled, if possible, into an even tighter ball than before. “You okay?”

Bucky nods and croaks out, “Shower?”

“Through there,” Clint points at the door of the (massive) en suite. “Use whatever you like, though none of it is fancy.” Like Clint can afford fancy. Bucky’ll probably be horrified by his lack of hair products. His hair is always so shiny and… floofy. “If you want some clean clothes or whatever, check in the drawers. Imma put on coffee.” Clint gets up to leave and then hesitates. “Kitchen is right, downstairs, second door on the left,” he says eventually. This house is a maze; if the smell of coffee isn’t enough for him to find the kitchen, he doesn’t want Bucky to get lost.

He waits for Bucky’s answering nod and leaves in his boxers. Coffee. Coffee first, then clothes.

 _Christ_ , he’s hungry. Maybe he’ll make pancakes for a change? Apart from he knows he won’t because Tony Stark’s chef grade kitchen fucking terrifies him. Man, he misses pancakes.

He makes coffee, feeling he shouldn’t start eating without Bucky, but Bucky takes so long in the shower that Clint’s genuinely wondering if (a) he can get away with eating a banana, just to tide him over, and (b) if he should go and check that Bucky hasn’t, like, _drowned_. In fact, he’s just decided that a banana is totally legit pre-checking snack when Bucky inches into the room wearing one of Clint’s Espresso Yourself work t-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants, which are too long for him and pool around his ankles.

“Oh hey,” Clint says, grabbing him a mug and pouring out coffee. “You’re not dead.”

Bucky mumbles something that sounds like it could be, “Debatable.”

“Bagels? I’d offer pancakes but – ” he gestures at the industrial hob, gleaming chrome appliances and Le Creuset cookware “ – not gonna lie, this kitchen scares me.”

Bucky’s gaze takes in the room and it’s like watching a computer boot up. His eyes widen and his shoulders relax and suddenly he’s _animated_ , awake and cognizant and excited. About a _kitchen_.

“Holy crap, this is amazing,” he says, hands gliding over everything reverently. “I wish I had a kitchen like this.”

“Yeah? Well, feel free to use this one. I dunno how.”

“Do you have the stuff for pancakes?” Bucky asks, immediately opening and closing cupboards until he’s found whatever pans and utensils he feels he needs.

“I think so? The fridge is there, but it’s not as – ” Bucky opens it and frowns at the contents “ – full as yours,” Clint finishes. “Should be flour in there though,” he points at a different cupboard. “I think.”

Clint watches for a moment as Bucky potters around the kitchen, apparently utterly content, before deciding a shower and clothes are in order.

“I’ll be back. Don’t burn the house down. You can’t afford the pay out.”

Bucky flips him the bird and Clint laughs.

Clint’s drawn back to the kitchen ten minutes later, showered and dressed, by the delicious smell of freshly made pancakes and the sound of Bucky humming to himself. Clint thinks he recognises it. The Weeknd? Daft Punk? Something Kate listens to, anyway.

“Sounding good, Bucko,” Clint says, smirking when Bucky jumps and glares at him. But the smirk slides of his face at the first mouthful of Bucky’s pancakes, which are light and fluffy and laced with spices Clint didn’t even know were in this kitchen.

“Oh my god, marry me,” Clint mumbles around a mouthful. “These are fucking epic.”

Bucky chokes on his coffee and Clint slaps him on the back while he coughs.

“Alright there, buddy?”

Bucky wheezes and nods, and Clint watches in mild concern for a moment until what he said percolated through his brain, and he’s suddenly vividly reminded of the conversation last night, about Bucky’s divorce and his douchey ex-wife.

“Hey,” he says, and his sudden shift in tone catches Bucky’s attention. He looks at him, eyes wide and still watery from coughing. “I just…” Clint shrugs, suddenly awkward. “Thanks. For – ” he shrugs again “ – telling me.” Bucky looks confused and Clint clarifies. “Last night. You didn’t have to… explain but.” He stalls, brain utterly failing to provide him with the right words. He shrugs for a third time, feeling useless. “Your ex sounds kinda awful,” he settles on. “No offence.”

“Oh.”

Bucky looks kinda lost, a faint blush staining his cheekbones. He looks down at his plate in apparent confusion and it’s only then that Clint realises that he’s sweeping one thumb over the knuckles of Bucky’s left hand repetitively.

Clint lets go.

They finish breakfast in silence.

The next couple of weeks are weird. Clint and Bucky still meet up any day Lucky doesn’t meet Clint at the door – which is most of them now; Lucky sure does love Alpine – but there’s this weird tension, and conversations that should be easy occasionally trail off into awkward silences. Clint feels like Bucky’s trying to tell him something, but he can’t for the life of him work out what it is.

And then, one Wednesday, after a horrible closing shift at Espresso Yourself, Clint skips Stark’s place entirely and just turns up at Bucky’s to find Lucky prancing around the kitchen ( _vindicated_ ) but Bucky looking harried.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, “I’m on a conference call with partners in Seoul and it’s just gone,” he waves his hand vaguely, clearly trying to illustrate just how crazy everything has suddenly got. “You can stay but it’s gonna be boring. I’ve got to sort this out.”

“I thought you were on a sabbatical?” Clint asks, toeing his shoes off regardless. He doesn’t want to go back to Stark’s huge empty mansion.

“Only for two months – Shuri made me – but then I asked to work from home for a while because – ” Bucky abruptly cuts himself off, giving Clint a strange, almost scared look. “Never mind.” He takes a deep breath and continues. “I’ve been doing distance stuff and boring database stuff. I go into Manhattan once a week but…” He shrugs and trails off.

“But you’re always here when I come over,” Clint says, confused.

Bucky stares at him for a moment.

“I think Lucky just goes back when I’m not around,” he says eventually.

Bucky disappears after that, but Clint doesn’t leave. At least here he doesn’t feel like he’s in a haunted house and even a distracted Bucky is better than no Bucky at all. So Clint raids Bucky’s fridge for snacks and dicks around on his phone for a while before queuing up Bucky’s Netflix and starting some drama Kate’s really into. Turns out it’s really fucking gay, which explains why Kate’s into it, but it’s good.

He watches four episodes. Then he makes a sandwich. Then he makes another sandwich and follows the sound of Bucky’s voice until he finds the study, awkwardly sliding the plate onto the desk as unobtrusively as possible before backing out of the room with a dorky wave. Bucky just stares at him, probably because he’s being a weirdo.

He goes back to Netflix. He watches three more episodes. Then he starts the last one because… season finale, right? Might as well.

Obviously, Bucky walks in just as the three leads are about to have sex.

“Um.”

“Oh hey,” Clint pauses the show. On the now froze TV, Jamal has his lips around Ellen’s nipple, while Micah kisses her mouth. “It’s called _Tessellate_. My friend Kate recommended it.”

Bucky stares at the screen then looks back at Clint. “You’re still here,” he says inanely.

“Stark’s house is too big.”

Bucky stares a little more.

“Thanks for the sandwich,” he says eventually.

“Hey, no problem. Least I could do.”

Bucky sits down.

“How much is there left?”

“Half an hour-ish,” Clint says. “But it’s the season finale so; spoilers.”

Bucky shrugs. “That’s okay.” He kicks his feet onto the couch and relaxes into the cushions. It must be close to one a.m. but he’s still in a shirt and slacks.

Clint presses play and watches as Jamal, Ellen and Micah finally have sex, watches Uza hold hands with Seema as she comes out to her family, and watches Connor finally, _finally_ accept his girlfriend’s financial support for top surgery. Clint maybe cries, just a little, but hopefully the room is dark enough that Bucky doesn’t notice.

Then Bucky stops Netflix from autoplaying season two and the sudden silence is almost oppressive.

“That,” he says eventually, “was really fucking gay.”

Clint snorts out a laugh. “Hell yeah it was. Explains why Kate likes it so much. But it’s good, you should watch it.”

Bucky hums. “I mostly watch sci-fi to be honest. This kinda stuff isn’t really my thing.”

Clint remembers the two hour long argument they had about the best Star Trek series a few weeks back. Bucky argued for _Next Generation_ but Clint had loved the Original Series when he was a kid. He’d had such a crush on Uhura.

“There’s more to life than Star Trek, you know,” he says, just to be annoying, but Bucky’s clearly too tired to even defend Star Trek, because all he says is, “Maybe, but not much more.”

They both stare at the frozen TV screen.

“You wanna stay?” Bucky asks softly. “There’s room.”

His voice makes Clint jump.

“Nah,” he says after a moment. “I’ve been sitting for fucking ages. I should go home. Exercise you know? Plus Lucky needs a walk.”

There’s another long pause where Bucky just stares at him, his face bathed in the soft light from the TV.

“Alright,” he says eventually. “You free tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Come over.”

Another long pause. Once again, Clint feels like he’s missing something.

“Okay,” he says, at last.

Clint not sure why, but he leaves for Bucky’s just after breakfast the next day, walking the four point seven miles with Lucky by his side.

“You don’t normally get to Bucky’s this way, do you Luck?” he asks the dog, who gives him a doggy grin in return, tongue lolling. He suddenly laughs. “What do you think Stark would say if I made the hole in the hedge _bigger_ , eh boy? You think he’d be okay with that? Seems unfair that you get a shortcut to Bucky’s and I don’t.”

It takes about an hour to walk to Bucky’s and it’s only half way there that he remembers that he could have just biked and saved himself the time. But he’d left just gone eight thirty and that seemed too early to arrive. Nine thirty was far better. Maybe.

He should have cycled. He should have waited ‘til a normal time and just cycled over like he usually did. Why was he a bag of cats today?

“Hey!” Bucky greets him at the door. “I thought we could go to Brooklyn.”

“What?”

Clint had been fully expecting to sit around on a series of couches and lawn chairs, same as they do every time he comes over, but here Bucky is in black skinny jeans and a pale pink t-shirt, looking ready to _do shit_.

“Brooklyn. You lived there, right? We can go, breathe the beautiful polluted New York air. Don’t worry, Lucky can come too.”

Clint looks down at the dog in question, then back up to Bucky. “Okay?”

Bucky grins and pulls the front door shut behind him. “You get to pick the car,” he says, leading the way to the garage.

“How many do you have?” Clint asks suspiciously, thinking of the ten cars parked idle in Stark’s garage.

“Only three but one is technically my buddy Steve’s. I’ve been keeping it for him since he moved to the UK with his wife, along with a whole bunch of his shit.”

Bucky unlocks the garage door, swinging it up and flooding the room with bright summer daylight. There’s an imported dark blue BMW, a dinged-up red pickup that Clint assumes must be Steve’s, a space where Clint figures Bucky’s ex-wife’s car used to sit, and then there’s –

“Fucking hell,” Clint says in awe, wide eyes taking in the cherry red convertible _something_ that’s sat gleaming in the sun. “That’s…”

“A cherry red convertible 1965 Chevrolet Impala,” Bucky says proudly. “Fixed it up myself.”

“ _What_?” Clint turns his wide eyes on the man next to him.

“I bought it at auction just out of college – with my first Wakanda pay check, in fact. It was a wreck. I spent the next eight or so years doing it up. Didn’t have anywhere to keep it for the first three years, so T’Challa kindly kept it for me, but when we bought our first house I made sure we had room for it.”

“You fixed it up?” Clint glides his hand over the glossy paintwork. “That’s _amazing_.”

Bucky grins. “You wanna take it for a spin?”

“To Brooklyn?” Clint asks. “Aren’t you worried about it getting scratched or something?”

Bucky waves Clint’s concerns away, busying himself with taking the soft top off and tucking it securely away. “Nah, we’ll park at my friend Natasha’s place in Park Slope. She has dedicated on-street parking and her husband is currently in Chicago for a thing. It’ll be free.”

He opens the door and ushers Lucky into the back seat, making Clint cringe at the idea of the dog’s unclipped nails on the leather, but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind.

“I – okay,” Clint says, though it’s obvious Bucky’s already decided. He’s slid across the bench seat and is busy checking the glove compartment for… Clint’s not sure, actually. But he pulls out some blue reflective Ray Bans and tucks them into his hair. Not for the first time, Clint is hit by the realisation that Bucky is sort of stupidly attractive.

“Well, come on then,” Bucky says impatiently, beckoning Clint into the car. “If we leave now we’ll be in Brooklyn in time for brunch.”

Clint snorts. Brunch. Since when is he the kind of person who has _brunch_? But he gets in the car.

When Bucky had fixed the car up he’d apparently added an aux jack into the stereo. He brings up Spotify on his phone, connecting everything up before handing his phone over to Clint to pick music. So Clint blasts some generic road trip playlist (he barely knows how to use Spotify, but doesn’t really want to advertise that fact to Bucky) while he and Bucky sing along off key and attempt to bicker over the rushing wind about the merits of Bryan Adams as a musician. Clint thinks he has very few, but Clint listens almost exclusively to his mom’s classic jazz and blues records, so really, that’s unsurprising.

All in all, driving across Long Island in a convertible classic car while blasting road music is probably the coolest thing Clint has ever done in his entire life.

Bucky’s friend Natasha lives in one of those townhouses that is probably also secretly a mansion. It’s weird to think that technically this is still Brooklyn. None of _these_ buildings will be owned by a mob.

Actually, that’s probably not true. But if one _is_ owned by a mob, it won’t be the kind that harasses pensioners for a pittance.

Bucky takes Clint to a place called Sunny’s Kitchen for brunch, which is delicious, before demanding Clint show him ‘his’ Brooklyn. So they walk into the rougher areas and Clint takes him to the Bean Tree to meet all his old colleagues, and to a couple of great record stores, and to a bunch of cool second hand bookshops – though those are more for Bucky than Clint. Clint’s dyslexia is severe enough that he can barely read one page of a conventionally printed book without the words swimming away from him.

“Oh and,” Clint says, dragging Bucky into Finders Keepers, “this is the best consignment shop in the entire borough. They sell decent basics and sometimes they even have LPs.”

He actually needs a couple of new t-shirts; Alpine savaged one and he caught another on the door at work, ripping a huge hole under the arm. He intends to be quick – shopping is boring and he doesn’t expect Bucky to enjoy sitting around until he’s done – but Bucky surprises him by immediately heading towards the rails, rifling through them while humming Macklemore’s _Thrift Shop_ as Clint debates between various punny shirts. When Clint emerges from the changing rooms, he finds Bucky crouched down next to a beautiful old Kenwood record player, Lucky lying curled at his feet.

“Ho shit,” Clint says. “A Kenwood?” He gives the machine a critical once over – finding something like this in a consignment shop is almost too good to be true, even if it has a sign on it saying ‘doesn’t turn, $10’. “My mom had one like that, with big Wharfdale speakers. Beautiful sound quality.”

“What happened to it?” Bucky asks, now scrutinising the back of the record player.

“Dunno. Mine got thrown out of a sixth floor window though.”

“What?” Bucky asks, then, “Oh,” when he remembers Clint’s record player had been yet another victim of Ivan the Super.

Clint starts looking through a nearby rail, even though it seems to mostly be old maxi dresses.

“I think I can fix this,” Bucky says eventually.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Bucky squints at it and then apparently comes to a decision. “I’m gonna get it.”

“It come with speakers?”

Bucky frowns, mutters to himself, and heads to the counter. Clint leaves him and Lucky to it.

Instead he makes his way over to the winter jackets – it’s always better to buy them now ‘cause they’re cheaper – but doesn’t find anything he likes. He does find an absolutely _epic_ leather jacket though, but it’s nearly a hundred dollars. Clint might have saved up a bunch of money living at Stark’s place, but he’s not so comfortable he can drop nearly a hundred dollars on a jacket he doesn’t really need.

“Got some,” Bucky says, almost in his ear and making Clint jump.

“Got some what?”

“Speakers.” Bucky sees the leather jacket. “Hey, that’s great.” He nods towards it and then looks at Clint pointedly. “Try it on.”

“It’s nearly a hundred bucks,” Clint protests.

Bucky rolls his eyes and reaches for the jacket, taking it off the hanger and holding it out. “It’ll suit you,” he says. “Try it on.”

Clint stares at Bucky mulishly, but he just stares back until Clint huffs and slides his arms into the sleeves.

“Hey,” Bucky says softly as he turns Clint around. “Look at that.” He runs both hands over Clint’s shoulders, adjusting the jacket before sweeping one along Clint’s collar to pat him lightly on the chest. “Gorgeous.”

Clint turns to look at himself in a conveniently placed mirror and damn, Bucky’s kinda right. He looks very James Dean. Or like a seventies punk star, just with better hair. He straightens his spine and looks himself in the eye. _Not bad, Barton_ , he thinks, and his eyes find Bucky’s in the mirror. For a moment he thinks he sees something almost _hot_ in Bucky’s gaze, but is disappears before Clint can be sure.

“I’ll get it for you,” Bucky says. “Call it a late birthday present.”

Suddenly Clint feels like his skin is too small, like something very, very important is hovering on the edge of his understanding. Bucky’s eyes are huge and blue in the mirror, fixed on his in a way Clint feels he should recognise but doesn’t.

“I – ” he says, but he cuts himself off. Licks his lips. “Okay,” he says instead. “Okay, yeah.”

The woman behind the counter flushes prettily when Bucky asks if they can pick their stuff up later. She agrees though, and writes BUCKY BARNES PAID IN FULL on the back of a till receipt, taping it to the top of one speaker. Clint’s three-for-ten-dollars t-shirts and the leather jacket sit in a Finders Keepers tote bag beside it, listing to one side.

“You close at five, right?” Bucky asks and, at the woman’s answering nod, he says, “Cool, we’ll be back before then,” and gives her a movie-star grin.

They go for ice cream. Clint buys a dinged up one dollar jazz compilation record from a pop-up record fair because it contains a Dizzy Gillespie recording he hasn’t heard before. Bucky buys two loaves of artisan bread from a little sourdough bakery for himself and a cinnamon bun for Clint. He also buys Clint the fanciest (and most expensive) coffee he’s ever drunk. It’s on the tip of his tongue to make some kind of comment – the first thing that springs to mind is along the lines of ‘sugar daddy’ – but for some reason, Clint stops himself. The jacket has made him feel off-kilter and he can’t stop hearing the echo of Bucky saying ‘gorgeous’.

At one point, Bucky puts a hand to Clint back, gently moving him out of the way of a woman making her way down the sidewalk in a wheelchair. The heat of his palm seems to sink into Clint’s skin and he swears he can feel it for long minutes after Bucky steps away.

He doesn’t know what it _means_.

Bucky gets several appreciative looks when he pulls up next to Finders Keepers in the Chevy just before five and the kid who helps him carry their stuff out practically starts drooling. The two of them chat idly for a couple of minutes while Clint just sits in shotgun, the car keys pressed between his fingers like knuckledusters, half any eye out for anyone who looks like they’d take a chance of jacking a classic Chevy. Clint won’t let that happen, he’s prepared. In fact, he’s so focussed on his – probably entirely pointless – task that he jerks at the sound of Bucky’s door slamming shut.

“I thought we could go for dinner?” Bucky asks, his voice like tempered glass. “Back home.”

Clint guesses he must mean in the Hamptons. Clint wouldn’t call it _home_ but he nods regardless. Anything to not have to use Stark’s kitchen. Anything to not be alone in that house.

He kinda hates it, really; that house. He didn’t realise until he went back to Brooklyn.

They drive back listening to bass heavy R&B that vibrates up through the seat and into Clint’s chest. Not Clint’s first choice – not that Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday can really compete with the winds of the Long Island Expressway – but it’s enough to buzz through his brain, drowning out his swirling thoughts. Bucky sings along under his breath; he knows most of the words. Bucky never struck Clint as an R&B guy, but then again he’s fairly sure most of what they’re listening to is Top 40 stuff so maybe Bucky’s just not a music guy.

Though, why’d he buy a record player then?

Clint snorts under his breath. Rich people.

Bucky takes him to a restaurant that’s attached to a golf course, practically on the seafront. It’s classy, but not so classy they get dirty looks for turning up in jeans and with a dog in tow.

“My treat,” Bucky says.

“But – ”

“Gotta have a birthday meal, right?”

“My birthday was nearly two months ago.”

There’s a long silence. There are so many long silences now.

“Please, Clint,” Bucky says eventually, his voice soft and alarmingly tender. “Just… let me.”

Abruptly, Clint feels tears prick his eyes. He has no idea what’s happening. He’s surrounded by rich folks, in a golf course restaurant in the Hamptons, with a founding employee of Wakanda who dresses like a model and moves like he belongs. In contrast, Clint just bought three shirts on deal at a consignment shop, all his belongings fit into three duffel bags and a box, and he doesn’t even have a driver’s licence anymore since his expired two years ago. He bikes everywhere. He’s a barista. He’s _nobody_.

Clint fixes his gaze on the crashing waves and stares and stares and stares.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says quietly after more long silent minutes have passed. Clint turns to find him with his hands tucked under his thighs, eyes downcast. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay,” Clint says, though he’s not a hundred percent sure that’s true.

Another long silence stretches. Under the table, Lucky huffs. A gull screams overhead.

“No offence,” Clint says eventually, gaze once again fixed on the waves, “but I really hate rich people.”

“Yeah,” Bucky replies, and Clint can feel his eyes heavy on the side of his face. “Yeah, I can understand that.”

He gets lobster, because why the fuck not. He gets lobster and half-way through he realises he doesn’t like lobster. He gets profiteroles in chocolate sauce for dessert. Bucky explains about how he’s gonna fix the record player, he explains about how he fixed the Chevy, he talks about learning to be a mechanic from watching his dad in his auto shop in Red Hook. He talks about his buddy Steve in the UK, and Natasha in Brooklyn, and the long list of friends he only now realises his ex-wife assumed he was sleeping with. And slowly Clint starts to reply, telling Bucky about the farm in Iowa, and his dad’s drinking, and his mom’s love of Nina Simone and Chet Baker. Of running away to New York City to make it big only to discover you can be dirt poor in New York City too. Of Kate; disinherited by her rich daddy for being bi, and America; accepted by her huge poor Catholic Hispanic family despite being gay as hell.

Over the course of nearly three hours they drink two bottles of wine. Then Bucky drives the five miles back to his house very, _very_ slowly. Luckily the streets are deserted.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he mumbles, shamefaced, as he parks the Chevy back in the garage. “That was so fucking stupid.”

Lucky barks as if in agreement then rushes off, probably to find Alpine, while Clint helps unload Bucky’s new record player onto a counter in the part of the garage that is clearly some kind of workshop. He takes the tote bag with the shirts and the leather jacket but for some reason he can’t bring himself to look inside, instead leaving it by the front door, ready to be picked up and taken back to Stark’s when he leaves.

They end up in the conservatory, sitting side by side on one of the couches and sharing a six pack of beer.

Time spirals and slowly Clint’s shoulders loosen, until there are no awkward silences, only prolonged periods of hysterical giggling over Bucky’s John Mulaney impressions, Clint’s barista anecdotes, the ridiculous mishaps of Bucky’s buddy Steve as a teenager. Until the sun has set and the lamp on the side table is switched on, and it seems like everything good exists in this little sphere of warm yellow light. Until hours later, when everything is hazy and warm, and a hand lands high on Clint’s thigh.

Bucky leans in. A feather light kiss is pressed against Clint’s lips, and Clint –

Clint freezes.

His eyes are open, shocked, and he can see, out of focus, the dusky sweep of Bucky’s eyelashes. His mouth is so soft, so gentle and tentative, but Clint can feel the prickle of his stubble against his lips and he can’t – he _can’t_ –

He doesn’t move. He just watches, heart beating wildly, as Bucky’s forehead crumples, as he exhales, hot air fanning over Clint’s top lip.

“Sorry,” he breathes, the word more a feeling than a sound. “I shouldn’t have – ” He pulls away, taking all his heat with him, tucking his hands into his lap and ducking his head.

“Sorry,” he says again.

And then he looks up, wary and worried and – with that _look_ : that look that he’s been shooting Clint’s way for – for _months_ now, and Clint didn’t understand it but all the dominoes in his head are falling one by one – clink, clink, clink – and he thinks… He doesn’t know what he thinks. He _can’t_ think. There’s a wild static in his head, like… like screaming gulls, and it’s drowning everything else out.

“What?” Clint manages, sounding shocky and distant.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says again, and now Clint can hear the tears in his voice, and it makes his eyes swim. “I just – ”

But Clint can’t hear what Bucky _just_. He can’t. Not – not now. And suddenly, everything is too much; Bucky’s expression, the emotions swirling in Clint’s chest, everything. It’s too much and Clint needs to go.

“Bucky,” he says, and his voice sound all wrong to his ears. “Bucky. Will you look after Lucky for me? I have to – I have to go.”

Bucky’s head shoots up. “No, I – don’t.” He reaches for Clint, but then pulls back, and Clint’s fingers tingle in sympathy.

“Will you?” he asks again. “Please?”

And Bucky says, “ _Clint_.”

And Clint – Clint’s never heard anyone say his name like that. Not ever. Like it’s the only thing they can say, that they’d want to say. Like it’s tearing them up but they can’t help themselves. Like it’s diamonds and honey in their mouth, like it’s everything.

Clint scrubs his hand over his face furiously. “Please, Buck,” he says desperately. “ _Please_.”

He stares at the hole in Bucky’s sock where his big toe pokes through. Rich people shouldn’t have holey socks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says wetly. “Yeah, Clint. I’ll look after Lucky.”

And Clint opens the conservatory door and walks into the darkness.

It’s called a gibbous moon, Clint remembers suddenly; fat and white but not yet full. Or just past full maybe, he’s not been paying attention. It paints Stark’s garden in silvery brushstrokes, everything looking somehow flat, the shadows beneath the trees dark voids that swallow everything.

It’s been too hot for the grass to dew, but that heat is leaking away now, radiating back out into the air and towards the stars – the stars Clint can see from here, because the Hamptons has very little light pollution. He shivers, lying flat on his back in the grass. There’s so much space here and so few people. Is every mansion here home only to one or two people? Do they all just rattle around like dried peas in a bottle? Hell, some of these houses are second homes, or third, or fourth. Some of them don’t have anyone in them at all.

Clint clenches his fists, making his palms sting.

He’d forced his way through the gap in the hedge. He’s not sure why. He’d just… walked through the dark of Bucky’s garden until he’d hit the perimeter, and then he’d just. Kept going. Turns out the gap is almost straight across from the conservatory door. Or maybe it isn’t, maybe in the darkness Clint veered off to the side. Thinking back, he can’t remember what Bucky’s house looked at from the other side of Stark’s hedge. Could he see the conservatory? Or was it the kitchen he saw? He can’t remember.

He frowns and it pulls at the scratch across his face. He shifts and the cut down his arm stings. He’s not got his shoes, or his keys, or his phone. He left them all behind with Bucky, along with his dog. He can’t get into Stark’s stupid mansion, or his stupid pool house, or the dumb frat house masquerading as a shed, so he just lies on the grass and stares at the stars, trying not to think.

If he thinks, he’ll probably start crying.

Does the Hamptons make people lonely? He thinks it probably does, because he feels so fucking lonely right now. Bucky was lonely, before –

(before what?)

– before he turned up –

(and what?)

– and no one here every actually looks happy despite having more money than God. And there’s no _distractions_. Or – or there’s too many; home cinemas and golf courses and chef-grade kitchens and a hot tub for every day of the week. People surround themselves with shit like it’ll keep the bad things at bay. But it doesn’t _work_. The bad things turn up anyway, so what’s the fucking _point_?

Bucky was never a bad thing though.

Clint scowls and closes his eyes.

He can’t even call Kate because he left his phone on the table in the conservatory next to Bucky’s couch. Can’t even unload all this shit he doesn’t want to think about on her because he’s _an idiot_ and left his phone behind. Which means –

The thing is. _The thing is_.

Clint’s never been interested in guys. And he doesn’t mean in that in a I-am-deeply-closeted way, he means that in a has-never-been-interested-in-guys way. He never snuck looks at his classmates in the locker rooms at school, he never had confusing dreams about Brad Pitt or Leo DiCaprio as a teenager, and he never got weirdly fixated when male sports stars took their shirts off at the end of games. He doesn’t have a _problem_ with it – different strokes for different folks and all, and he’s been to Pride with Kate every year since moving to New York and is always completely fine with handsy guys who press cherry-flavoured kisses to his lips just to celebrate the fact that they _can_ – but it just… isn’t who he is. He’s attracted to women. He’s straight and that’s not _changed_.

It’s just –

Bucky’s really funny. And he’s kind and nice and has great taste in TV. He sings the Weeknd under his breath and has holes in his socks even though he’s rich as fuck. He’s not patronising or judgey, he doesn’t get defensive when Clint corrects him about things, and he’s willing to learn when he finds he needs to. And –

And his eyes are really blue and the first time Clint met him, Clint thought; this guy could be a model.

And he kissed Clint.

And Clint –

The static is back, because Clint still doesn’t really know what he thinks of that.

He rolls over and gets to his knees, thinking he can at least get an inflatable or something from the pool to lie on, but there’s a ripping sound and a strange pressure on his knee, and he looks down to find he’s ripped a hole in the denim. It’s nothing really, nothing at all, apart from now he needs to buy new jeans and they don’t really have Goodwill or consignment stores in the Hamptons because everyone buys new shit every six months probably and –

Clint’s thoughts spiral again.

He thinks about Connor’s girlfriend in _Tessellate_. How she’d struggled for a while over being straight but attracted to a guy with a vagina, and how gently Connor had said, “We’re still just us.”

He’s still just Clint. And Bucky’s still just Bucky. So maybe all he has to do is work out what he, Clint, feels about Bucky.

Apart from that was kinda the problem to start off with.

Fuck.

He tries another tack. He imagines Idris Elba without his shirt on, because even Clint knows that Idris Elba is attractive. The mental picture is nice, but after a while Clint just feels weird about thinking on another man’s nipples for so long. Instead, he imagines Idris Elba naked. This just makes him feel kinda skeevy. As an experiment, he imagines Nakia Habithi naked but that also makes him feel kinda skeevy so he chalks that entire thought experiment up to being generally uncomfortable imagining people naked without their consent and moves on.

He pictures Bucky from that day in the pool. Something twists low in his gut, though he’s not _entirely_ sure what it is. Lust? Anxiety? Panic? He’s not sure. He pictures Bucky just after he kissed Clint, his eyes wide and full of –

It’s like a flock of starlings take flight in Clint’s stomach. His chest feels tight and he feels something like anxiety prickle in his fingers.

“Can you be bisexual for only one person?” Clint asks the grass.

The grass doesn’t answer. Clint sighs.

In the end, Clint doesn’t find an inflatable. Instead Clint watches the sky get brighter from his spot on his back on the lawn, blood dried tacky to his arm and his now dirty jeans newly-ripped at the knee. He listens to the dawn chorus, made occasionally indistinct by his hearing aids. He tracks the planes into New York across the pale blue sky. He watches the shadows of the trees inch down the grass, until the moon dips below the treeline and the sun rises above it.

Eventually he gets up, stiff and achy, and wriggles his way back through the gap in the hedge.

It’s not the conservatory he can see from here, not fully, it’s the big patio doors that lead to the main lounge area. Walking a straight line in the dark is hard, apparently. Though when the other option is stumbling around in the dark for hours, the frustrating five minutes it took for him to find the gap last night seems like good fortune.

Clint looks down at himself. Christ, he’s a mess. His jeans are dirty and his socks are unsalvageable and there’s a long scratch down his right arm, tacky with dried blood, along with a myriad of smaller ones that are raised and red but not bleeding. He doesn’t want Bucky to see him like this, looking like such a mess, but he doesn’t have his keys so he doesn’t have a choice.

He walks across the garden to the conservatory door he left through last night. He breathes in, attempts to square his shoulders but hunches over again almost immediately, and knocks on the glass.

Movement catches Clint’s eye, and he turns just in time to see Bucky jerk up from the couch and almost fall, before scrambling to the door.

He – he slept on the couch in the conservatory, curled up with Lucky. He never even got _changed_.

The door is wrenched open.

“ _Clint_ ,” Bucky breathes out, eyes wide and wild. “Are you – ” something panicked slides across his expression. “What did you _do_?”

“I went through the hedge.” Clint’s trying to avoid Bucky’s eyes but Bucky keeps moving to catch them.

“You went…? You’re _hurt_.” Bucky grabs his wrists and gently steers him into the kitchen. He takes a cloth from the sink, wets it, and presses it to one of Clint’s hands. Clint didn’t notice but he’s broken a couple of nails and there’s dust everywhere, his nailbeds black with it.

“I slept in the garden,” Clint says inanely. “Or…” he shrugs. “I was in the garden.” He’s not sure he slept.

“Clint,” Bucky says again, helplessly.

Clint feels tears prick his eyes, but Bucky doesn’t say anything, just passes a damp cloth over his palms, the backs of his hands, the cut on his arm. He wrings out the cloth and rewets it, gently dabbing it to the corner of Clint’s temple, over his forehead, under his eyes. It’s only then that Clint realises his crying – nothing dramatic, just a slow leak of moisture that has nothing to do with sadness and everything to do with feeling utterly overwhelmed.

Bucky’s hands are so gentle.

“It’s okay,” he says softly. “You’re okay.”

Clint takes a deep, shuddering breath and looks up at the ceiling to steady himself.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

Clint looks back at him. His hair is sticking in every which way and his eyes are rimmed red. Did he cry, last night? The idea of Bucky alone in this house, crying on the couch, makes Clint’s chest hurt. Hopefully Lucky cuddled him.

Bucky gives him a rueful smile. “Didn’t mean to trigger a sexuality crisis.”

Clint doesn’t like the self-deprecation tone Bucky’s using, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s still doesn’t know _what_ to say really.

“C’mon,” Bucky says gently, tugging once again at Clint’s wrist. “Sit down. I’ll make coffee.”

He sets the machine going before leading Clint back into the conservatory, guiding him into sitting on the couch like Clint’s ninety and fragile and not thirty-one and dumb. Once he’s gone again, Lucky trots up and shoves his nose into Clint’s lap, clearly sensing that Clint isn’t feeling his best and wanting to help. Lucky’s such a good dog.

“Did you look after him, boy?” Clint says quietly, ruffling his ears.

“I thought I was supposed to look after _him_.”

Bucky’s returned, standing in the doorway with two mugs of coffee. His collar is slightly damp; he looks as though he’s splashed water on his face. He looks more like than man Clint first met too, eyes tight and loneliness slung about his shoulders like a blanket. But there’s something else as well, something that makes Clint think of the feeling you get when sensation starts returning to cold-numbed hands. Like; this will hurt, but afterwards I’ll be able to use my hands again.

Clint cuts his gaze away, drawing his knees up, thinking too late of his dirty socks on the clean material. But Bucky doesn’t seem to care. He just sits down beside Clint and hands him a mug which says _Live Long and Prosper_ on it in Star Trek font.

“I fed Lucky.”

“Thanks.”

“No, Clint,” Bucky turns to face him on the couch, crossing his legs. “Before. I fed Lucky before.”

Even though it feels like showing his belly to something that can hurt him, Clint turns on the couch to mirror Bucky, cradling his coffee in both hands. Their knees touch, the material of Bucky’s expensive black Levis brushing against his skin through the tear in his Goodwill jeans.

“A hot guy turned up asking for his dog. And then the dog came back and I thought; if I feed the dog, it’ll keep coming back and the hot guy will come back too. So I fed the dog.” Bucky’s eyes are fixed on his. Clint wants to look away but for some reason he can’t. “And then a cat turned up. And the dog loved the cat so I kept the cat, because it also meant the dog would keep coming back. And if the dog kept coming, so would the hot guy.” Bucky’s mouth is trembling. “And then you were nice.”

Somehow, the change from ‘hot guy’ to ‘you’ makes Clint feel unsteady. There was ambiguity before, paper thin but there. There’s not any more. Clint looks away.

“Do you,” Clint starts, eyes fixed on the collar of Bucky’s pale pink t-shirt. “Do you think you can be bisexual for just one person?”

It might be a little cruel, asking Bucky this, but the grass didn’t have an answer and Clint needs one.

Bucky inhales, loud and sudden, and Clint’s gaze snaps to his face immediately. His eyes are closed, the skin around them tight, and he’s wearing an expression very close to what Kate calls America’s _the Lord is testing me_ expression. Clint would laugh, but on Bucky it looks too sad. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to hope.

Clint was right; it was cruel to ask him this.

“It’s just a label,” Bucky says eventually, refusing to meet Clint’s eyes and instead fixing his gaze somewhere on Clint’s dirty t-shirt. “They’re helpful to a point, but they’re not concrete.”

It’s not a yes, but it’s not a no, either. Clint nods.

They don’t speak for long minutes. Clint finishes his coffee and Bucky gently removes the Star Trek mug from his grip. He doesn’t leave for the kitchen though, he only places the mug next to his own empty one on the floor before returning his hands to his lap.

Clint fixes his eyes on the juncture between Bucky’s shoulder and neck, his eyes tracing the folds in the fabric, thinking. The kiss had made Clint see whole swathes of Bucky’s behaviour in a new light – the blushing and occasional stutters and the weirdness when Clint stripped at the pool – but it hadn’t clarified _Clint’s_ feelings, only muddied them. So now he thinks about how, despite the fact that for the first two weeks Bucky had been awkward as all hell, he’d always made a point of having at least a minute of conversation with Bucky because he seemed so lonely. He thinks about how he agreed to go back after that first strained dinner. He thinks about how he grew to dread the sound of Lucky’s claws on the stone of Stark’s atrium, because it meant he’d have to spend the afternoon and evening in that big empty house instead of at Bucky’s.

He thinks about how comfortable he was with having Bucky in his space, how he didn’t think twice about telling Bucky to climb into bed with him. How he always felt flustered with how Bucky looked at him, but he never felt _uncomfortable_.

He thinks about Bucky’s hand on his back, moving him gently out of the path of the lady in a wheelchair. He thinks about Bucky calling him gorgeous.

He thinks about the kiss.

Bucky’s lips had been so soft and his stubble had scratched lightly against Clint. It hadn’t been _bad_ , but it had been a little weird. His hand had been so warm on his thigh though, and he’d been so gentle.

Bucky’s always so gentle.

It takes a moment for Clint to register the new sensation. He looks down. Bucky’s hand is resting on his knee, but his index finger is restlessly fiddling with a loose thread from the rip in Clint’s jeans, twirling it around and around. Every now and again he brushes the exposed skin of Clint’s knee, feather light, and now Clint’s aware of it, the contact sends sparks racing up his spine.

Clint looks at Bucky face then. He’s staring off into the garden looking melancholy, lost in thought.

Clint was right that first time: Bucky could totally be a model.

“Kiss me again,” Clint says, voice soft.

Bucky turns sharply, eyes wide. “What?”

“Kiss me again,” he repeats.

“Clint…”

“It’s okay,” Clint places his hand cross where Bucky’s is fidgeting restlessly. “I’m okay. Please.”

In _Tessellate_ , Sparrow’s mom had said, “You’re either one thing or the other, you can’t be both,” and Sparrow had replied, “You _can_ , because I _am_.”

Maybe Clint’s only ever wanted to kiss women before today, but right now Clint wants to kiss Bucky Barnes a whole hell of a lot.

“Are you sure?” Bucky asks, but he’s already leaning in.

“Yeah,” Clint slides his hand up Bucky’s forearm. “I’m sure.”

Bucky’s fingertips touch tentatively against his jaw scant moments before his lips brush Clint’s. It’s gentle, so gentle, and Clint feels dizzy with it. He can feel Bucky’s stubble scratch against his own. There’s no taste of lipgloss or chapstick but Bucky’s lips are still soft. There’s no long hair brushing his face, or the hand held steady against Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky’s hand against _his_ face is larger than he’s used to.

Clint can taste coffee even though neither of them has opened their mouths.

It’s – it’s all so wonderful and strange.

Clint keeps waiting for Bucky to push, for him to open his mouth and escalate, but he never does and eventually Clint decides that if he wants it to happen, he’s going to have to be the one to do it. The low, shocky moan he gets in response is electrifying, and in answer he pulls Bucky closer, opens wider, moves until he’s lying down, Bucky covering him like a blanket and – oh, okay, this is definitely different. There are no breasts pressed against Clint’s chest. Bucky’s hips are slim instead of full, his stomach hard muscle instead of giving flesh, and – yeah. Yeah. Bucky’s hard.

“God.” The word sound almost ripped from Bucky’s throat. He presses kisses to Clint’s cheek, his neck, his chin. His hands are huge and gentle against Clint’s face and no one has ever held him like that, not even once. It makes him feel so treasured and safe that his mind whirls. “God, _Clint_.”

“Bucky,” he says, but he doesn’t know what to follow it with so he just says it again and again and again until Bucky stops the words with his mouth.

“What’s this?”

They’re in Bucky’s workshop, Clint watching Bucky mutter to himself as he carefully pulls apart the old record player. But he looks up at Clint’s question. And then _instantly_ looks shifty.

“Um. That isn’t – okay, pretend you didn’t see that.”

Clint picks it up. It looks like a phone, but clunky and made out of tiny Lego pieces.

“Why?” It’s kinda ugly, but it also looks sort of familiar. “What is it?”

“It’s an, uh, early Komoyo prototype?”

“What?” Clint laughs incredulously.

“Don’t tell Shuri, okay? I shouldn’t have it.”

The Komoyo is what Wakanda is famous for: modular smartphones, every part removable and replaceable. They’re designed to last for _years_ , so technological advancements instead focus on their operating system, Beads. Wakanda’s aim is sustainability and reduction of electronic waste and, thanks to the absolute _explosion_ of use across Africa, it has become a major player in the mobile tech market. Something Clint only knows because his buddy Luis info dumped on him about it once.

Clint wants to say _how the fuck would I tell Shuri King anything?_ but he refrains, instead slipping the Komoyo prototype back into Bucky’s overblown toolbox where he found it before returning his attention to Bucky and the elegant way he moves around his workspace.

They’d kissed on the couch for what felt like ages; never escalating, never getting further than Bucky’s hand, large and warm, on the skin of Clint’s side. It had been gentle, leisurely, almost chaste, but Clint never felt rushed or pressured, not even with admittedly slightly weird feeling of Bucky’s dick pressing hard against his, and eventually they’d slowed until it was just intermittent pecks to the lips, then just cuddling, until Bucky levered them off the couch citing the need for a shower. Clint had balked at that – he wasn’t sure he was ready to be naked with Bucky – but Bucky had just laughed and said, “I have more than one bathroom, Clint.”

So now he was here, clean and smelling faintly of Bucky’s bodywash, dressed in borrowed clothes and watching as Bucky tries to fix a broken ten dollar Kenwood record player.

“Tell me if you’re bored,” Bucky says.

Clint hides his smile in his fist. “I’m not bored.”

And he’s not. Bucky’s fascinating to watch like this, dressed in sloppy sweats and a washed-thin t-shirt. He’s focussed and precise, and under his sure hands the record player reveals its secrets: some loose wires, a sluggish motor, a degraded belt. All fixable things, according to Bucky.

Clint’s so absorbed in watching that his phone going off makes him jump, sending a cascade of wires and tools to the ground. He grimaces and picks them up, before pulling his phone out of the pocket in his borrowed shorts and laughing when he sees the notification.

“It looks like Tony Stark has finally got back to me about the hedge,” he says, swiping through the borderline incomprehensible messages one after another. Does Stark use speech-to-text? He must do, because no one would bother to _type_ all those random asides and conversational cul-de-sacs. And who the fuck is Jarvis?

“What does he say?” Bucky sounds muffled, bent over the record player with a small screwdriver between his teeth.

“A whole lot of stuff, apparently.” Clint squints at his phone, trying to work out what, if anything, Stark is asking him to do. “He’s sent the number of a gardener? I think I’m supposed to book them for whenever and they’ll just bill his account.”

Bucky hums distractedly. There’s a snap and a curse as Bucky drops something, and then he lets out an _aha!_ of satisfaction. Bucky fits the casing back onto the record player, plugs it in and switches it on. Nothing happens.

He frowns.

“Here,” Clint says, “you’re supposed to…” He moves the needle arm. There’s a muffled click and the platter starts rotating, and Clint grins up at Bucky. “Hey, you fixed it.”

“I _am_ good at my job, you know,” Bucky replies cheekily. “Shame I don’t have anything to test it with though.”

“Hold a sec.” Realisation strikes and Clint disappears back into the main house, heading for the door and the Finders Keepers tote bag resting by it. He slips his one dollar jazz compilation record from behind the jacket and t-shirts and hurries back. “Try this.”

It’s clear Bucky’s not used to record players – he just grabs the vinyl out of its sleeve with no care for fingerprints and drops the needle hard enough to make Clint wince – but he looks so pleased as the record spins that it takes him a little while to realise there’s no sound. He fiddles with the volume control. Clint supresses a grin.

“Why isn’t it playing?”

“Bucky,” Clint tries to hide the amusement in his voice, but he does a piss poor job of it. “You need to connect the speakers.”

Bucky glares at him, but connects the speakers.

Ella Fitzgerald blasts out so loudly Bucky stumbles – “holy fuck!” – and lunges for the volume control, and Clint can’t help himself; he laughs out loud, giddy and joyful. At first it’s just at the unexpectedness, but once he catches sight of Bucky’s face it descends into uncontrollable giggling. Bucky looks so _affronted_.

“Shut up,” he mutters as he starts to tidy away his tools. “I listen to Spotify on my phone like any normal adult.”

“Uh-huh,” Clint replies, grinning at Bucky’s flush. It’s nice to see Bucky flustered. Most of the time it’s Clint who’s blushing and wrong-footed.

He’s so distracted by Bucky, by the way the light plays over his strong hands as he tidies his workspace, that it takes a moment for the song to properly register with Clint. It sneaks up on him, Ella’s voice pouring like honey through the speakers and into this tiny workshop, brightening the dark corners and filling the space up, until her perfect, spun-gold voice is suddenly all Clint can hear.

 _But don’t change a hair for me_ , Ella sings. _Not if you care for me_.

Oh.

 _My Funny Valentine_ had been one of his mom’s favourite songs. She’d put on her ancient and crackling _Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book_ LP when his dad wasn’t home and take his hands, turning them both gently around the front room while singing _you’re my favourite work of art_ in her soft voice. His dad had eventually smashed that record in some rage over something or other, and over time his mom had stopped playing her records entirely, instead leaving them to gather dust in the basement for years before his parents’ death. But Clint can never forget this song, the warm hug of Ella’s voice reminding him of his mother’s soft hands and unconditional love.

It hits him differently though, here with Bucky.

 _Stay little valentine,_ sings Ella and all at once, Clint’s flush rivals Bucky’s own.

“What?” Bucky asks, as he closes the toolbox, clearly noting the way Clint’s just staring at him like a creeper, completely zoned out.

“I – nothing,” Clint says, shaking his head as if to dispel the memories and associations. “Nothing.”

The song ends, just the crackle of the dust on the needle remaining until the next song starts up, the swelling violins giving way to Sarah Vaughan singing _I’ll Be Seeing You_. Not Clint’s favourite version of this song – nothing beats Lady Day in his opinion – but God, the trumpets are good, and Sarah Vaughan can _sing_.

“I’m starving. You want some food?” Bucky asks, clearly deciding to let Clint off the hook. Not that Clint would know what to say if he’d pressed the issue. Sometimes a record just hits him, leaves him blindsided, and he’s never really too sure why. It’s why he keeps coming back to all his mom’s old records, despite enjoying a lot of current music. They just make him _feel_.

Abruptly, Clint becomes aware that he’s absolutely _starving_. “Holy shit, _yes_.”

“Cool. I’ll find you a box for your record player and then we’ll make pasta. And then… can I take you to the beach later? As, like, a date?”

Bucky sounds tentative and hopeful, holding himself in that way that means he knows he’s maybe pushing a little too hard but he’s unable to help himself, and all over again Clint is hit with the dizzying reality that _Bucky wants him_. It’s so _bizarre_.

But then something else Bucky said registers.

“My record player?”

Bucky’s tentative look melts into confusion. “Yes?”

“I – you bought me a – why?”

“Yours got thrown out of a six storey window,” Bucky says. “And you talk about your mom’s record collection all the time. And this was ten dollars and fixable. And I wanted to.”

They stare at each other; Bucky as though he’s waiting for an answer and Clint for some reason completely dumbfounded.

“Um, in the interests of full disclosure,” Bucky says, blushing slightly, when it becomes clear Clint can’t form any sensible thoughts past _um_. “I literally want to buy you, like, all the things, but I can tell that would make you super uncomfortable so I’m… trying to rein it in.”

“Right,” Clint says. “Okay. That’s, um, accurate.” That _would_ make him super uncomfortable. He’s spent far too long trying his best to make his own shit work to be comfortable with someone just coming in and paying for stuff. It would make him feel… worthless. Like his best isn’t good enough. “Though, um, you bought me that leather jacket,” Clint points out.

“Right, okay, true,” Bucky replies. “But in my defence; I am weak and you are hot.”

Clint doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“So…” Bucky says. “Pasta?”

Clint nods.

“And then…?”

He’s trying not to press, Clint can tell. He’s trying _so hard_ to respect Clint’s boundaries and all the new feelings and sensations being flung Clint’s way, but he’s also… just a guy who really wants to hang out with Clint. And Christ, that feels _so good_.

“You can take me on a date to the beach.”

“Yeah?” Bucky’s smile is a lovely thing, Clint decides. Truly, a beautiful thing.

People are going to see, if they go to the beach. They’ll be Hamptons people, so their opinion doesn’t matter, but they’re still real life human beings who will see Clint on a date with another guy and come to the natural conclusion.

Clint finds that he doesn’t care.

“Yeah,” Clint replies.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Funny Valentine by Ella Fitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqjKOalcI10) || [I'll Be Seeing You by Sarah Vaughan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDQxn_vUmgc)  
> ( [I'll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l44_n60QQ8) )


End file.
